20101228

Sorry but just like the previous years*, I cannot wish you a happy new year considering what's going to happen in 2011:

January 2011: volcano Eyjafjallajokull inrupts in Iceland. During this extremely rare phenomenon, billion of tons of CO2 are reabsorbed, causing unusually dry days and cold nights worldwide. In the process, the volcano also sucks about 5,167 planes from the sky.

February 2011 : the Cricket World Cup is sponsored by the Tea Party. Sarah Palin collapses during the seventh day stretch.

March 2011 : Kim Jong-il chokes on a gimchi pretzel. Two days later, his son Kim Jong-un is killed by the chief of intelligence services. The Red Army controls Pyeongyang, millions of North Koreans flock towards the South, thousands die on DMZ land mines. Three weeks later, the South announces that according to various trustable sources, Kim Jong-il might have caught a cold.

August 2011 : harrassed by a Harry Potter fan working for the IRS, J.K. Rowling resuscitates the sorcerer for a second round of seven books. Daniel Radcliffe declines, but will replace Johnny Depp for the next two Jack Sparrows after the miserable failure of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" at the box office : "I'm sick and tired of heptalogies - Sparrow movies fly by three, and I even have idle time to work for a Lucas franchise on even years. They said I had enough acting talent to play R2-D2"

September 2011 : the Rugby World Cup is sponsored by the Beer Party. Sarah Palin collapses after her sixty sixth six pack Joe.

October 2011 : in spite of an intense marketing campaign, Jonathan Franzen doesn't get the Nobel Prize for literature, which goes to George W. Bush for his works of fiction.

November 2011 : Greece is bailed out by a pool of betting companies based in Macau. France is refused the same favor. Hedge-a-bet Funds all the rage at the NYSE.

December 2011 : Obama can declare that as scheduled, there is not one US troop left in Iraq because Iraq ceased to exist on December the 5th, Iran claiming the bulk of the land.

20101219

blogule's Agence Fausse Presse managed to snatch from PeepeeLeaks a few top secret cables where several US envoys deliver their impressions about key world leaders:

- Nicolas Sarkozy : "A paranoid in love with the States, or rather obsessed with the need to be loved by Tom Cruise. Instills terror into his staff : no one dares criticize him, and he's been replacing them one by one by Oompas Loompas who call him "Your Highness", "Your Greatness", or "Dear Ladder". Now Sarkozy only refers to himself in third person."

- Silvio Berlusconi : "Like many statesmen, an eternal teenager obsessed with new conquests... which in spite of compulsive plastic surgery he needs to pay for. Told us to kiss Don Vito hello, and to thank him for his last delivery of Ukrainian blondes."

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad : "A narcissic psychopath lunatic. Likely to be good friends with our President George W. Bush."

- Tony Blair : "Very friendly but on the threshold of annoyingness. Insisted to show us his self-flagellation stigmata. Asked again for that seance with Churchill promised by the POTUS."

- Vladimir Putin : "When he enters the room, temperature drops 20 degrees. Each of his muscles is so tensed he constantly needs to tune them like piano strings... quite an experience: his face doesn't move one bit, but every five to six seconds you can hear a 'pling' or a 'plong'."

- Hu Jintao / Wen Jiabao : "The former has the sense of humor of a prison door. No wonder he wants to get rid of the latter, a brillant man with a constant smile on his face. But last time I had tea at Wen's (as usual a very pleasant afternoon), I found out back home that he'd planted about eight hundred acupuncture needles all over my back."

- Saddam Hussein : "Didn't understand why we got rid of him after all he did for us and we for him. Didn't like our farewell gift, a beautiful Lanvin hemp necktie."

20101211

In this "Oslo Farce" episode, China only managed to position itself at the same level as Hitler's Germany : 1935 was the only other time in history a country successfully prevented any of its citizens, including the winner, from attending the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony.

Yesterday, Liu Xiaobo's empty chair weighted as much as the world's most populated nation, and Beijing leaders can only blame themselves for being so stupid.

China decently can't afford many more tactical nor strategic blunders. Even if not as smart as Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping seems to be a more pragmatic than his predecessor-to-be Hu Jintao. Definitely not a visionary either, but at this stage the country can do with a little bit less ideology.

That's actually the problem : once more*, the only ideology the Politburo is considering to hold the country together is a sterile and suicidal nationalism. This short-term vision is an insult to the land of strategy.